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Agony of War: Iraq Countdown Separates Young Vineyard Family

Seventeen hours before Jared Meader joined his comrades in Western
Massachusetts, he sipped a whiskey sour, chatted with his buddies from
the sheriff's department and helped his daughter, Hailey, grab a
Cheeto just beyond the reach of her two-year-old arms.

Seemingly mundane activities for a weeknight in the dead of winter,
this Island native tried to get his fill of the simple things he will
miss for more than a year - during an overseas tour which could be
extended another 265 days if war halfway around the world erupts.

While Mr. Meader's wife, Julie, and his mother, Robin,
occasionally turned to wipe away a tear Monday night, the young soldier
appeared calm.

"It's like football. For 10 years, I've shown up
to practice and played hard, but I've never gotten in the game.
The game's here. That's what practice was all about,"
Mr. Meader said as he fingered an engraved cross his mother gave her son
in August 1993 when he left the Island for a six-year stint in the
United States Marine Corps.

The news seeped into the Meader household quite suddenly, pulling
Mr. Meader away from his wife, daughter Hailey and two-month-old son
Hunter immediately for three weeks of orientation training in western
Massachusetts. The National Guard granted the soldiers a 48-hour leave
Sunday afternoon before shipping them to a Middle East nation Mr. Meader
could not disclose and on a date he could not even tell his family.

"This is what I signed up for," Mrs. Meader said with a
laugh. She joked that her marriage vows should have included a line
about two-year-long absences.

"I'm almost anxious for him to go so that I can begin
the countdown for his return. It's been such a roller coaster the
last month," said the young mother, who is left behind with two
children in diapers, in a Vineyard Haven home not yet completely built.

Monday night's farewell was familiar to the young
soldier's parents, Danny and Robin Meader. A young military wife
in 1978, Robin clutched two babies, two-year-old Jared and a
one-month-old daughter Jaime, when her husband was shipped to Okinawa,
Japan for a year.

"It's why my husband got out of the military. When he
returned, his daughter didn't know him and Jared barely recognized
him. It's too hard," the elder Mrs. Meader said. She said
her husband retired from the Marines after nine years.

But the prospect of war against Iraq is one fight the young Mr.
Meader does not want to miss. He left the Island for a faraway
battlefront on the noon ferry Tuesday.

"Saddam Hussein has been proven to be crazy. He kills his own
people and looks the other way when terrorists train in his country.
We've been isolated for so long, and Sept. 11 reminded us that we
aren't. Now's the time to react," Mr. Meader said.

Despite recent anti-war protests in America, some that touched the
Island community, Mr. Meader has no misgivings about his participation
in a possible war against Iraq.

"A protest has never stopped a war. So long as there are
troops to send, there will be wars," he said.

As part of a water purification unit, this sergeant expects a warm
welcome from some of the hundreds of thousands of military men and women
waiting in Middle East countries for a war declaration from the White
House.

"In the desert, water's your most precious commodity. I
understand we'll be treated very well," Mr. Meader said,
explaining that his team can rid any type of water of deadly
contamination. The unit is prepared to produce enough water for cooking,
consumption and weekly showers for men and twice weekly for females
living in temporary bases.

Even though the Meader family traded military duties for a quieter
life as operators of the Flying Horses carousel before Jared entered
kindergarten, the guardsman's childhood play involved some sort of
military games. When Mr. Meader, at the age of 17, asked his parents to
sign permission forms for him to enlist in the Marines, his mother said
she was neither surprised nor pleased.

Mr. Meader devoted the next six years to the Marine Corps as a
machinist, then an expert marksman who taught other soldiers and
competed for the Corps against other military branches. He spent one
year of duty at a base in Japan - seeing the world, as Mr. Meader
puts it, on "taxpayers' dollars." The same day he
ended his six-year commitment with the Marines in 1999, Mr. Meader
enlisted with the National Guard and worked with the military police in
Taunton while his future wife finished college in North Adams.

The Meaders returned to the Island, where both of their families
still lived, shortly after they were married. Mr. Meader took a job as a
deputy sheriff at the Dukes County House of Corrections, and Mrs. Meader
juggles teaching figure skating to Island youth with the new
responsibilities of motherhood.

Hailey will utter her first sentence and Hunter will take his first
step in their father's absence, but Mrs. Meader promises to
capture the children's progress in audio cassette recordings
she'll ship to her husband. Mr. Meader also packed away a
mini-recorder, a device he hopes will at least keep his voice familiar
to Hailey and Hunter.

The sergeant also packed a few war movies, We Were Soldiers and
Braveheart, and a PlayStation II in his military duffel bag -
creature comforts the military allows as part of a "morale welfare
recreation pack." His wife is already picking items -
Koolaid mix, a Nerf football and Hailey's drawings -
she'll send in his first care package.

But no amount of packing, list-making and pep talking can prepare
Mr. Meader's family for his absence.

"I knew this could come, but I always thought it would be
everyone else's husband first," Mrs. Meader said.